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Sophia, the suffragette

A new biography of Maharaja Duleep Singh's daughter traces the transformation of a paparazzi princess into a law-breaking feminist Iam often asked how I found Sophia but hon estly, she found me. I was on maternity leave in 2010 and to keep my brain awake, I read voraciously in the short windows between my son's naps.

| TNN | Updated: Jan 11, 2015, 06:20 IST

A new biography of Maharaja Duleep Singh's daughter traces the transformation of a paparazzi princess into a law-breaking feminist Iam often asked how I found Sophia but hon estly, she found me. I was on maternity leave in 2010 and to keep my brain awake, I read voraciously in the short windows between my son's naps. One morning, as I turned the pages of a local magazine I was transfixed by a single image my tired mind could not explain. It showed a brown-skinned woman dressed as an Edwardian lady , selling copies of a militant suffragette newspaper outside `her home at Hampton Court Palace'. She looked Indian. My curiosity was further stoked when I discovered that her surname was Singh, my name too by marriage. I tugged on a thread, and an avalanche of a story landed on me. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh would take me on one of the greatest journalistic adventures of my life.
It was like a hunt for a missing person where the clues were buried under dust and the most of the witnesses were dead. It soon became clear that my Princess was going to be elusive, the opposite of her father -Maharajah Duleep Singh, about whom so much has been written. If you are Punjabi, no matter where you live, chances are you will know about the tragic dispossession of Duleep.

When he was just a boy, officials from the East India Company posing as benefactors, tore him away from his screaming mother, his fortune, and his homeland. He lost everything, including the fabled Koh-i-Noor diamond -which like the Maharajah himself -would eventually find its new home in England.

Maddeningly , Sophia trod more lightly than her ancestors. She left footprints for me to follow in the Victorian and Edwardian press but they made little sense. Everybody knew she was the goddaughter of Queen Victoria and daughter of a Maharajah. Some articles described her as a party girl and frivolous fashion icon, others as a serious humanitarian. She was a celebrated horse woman and hockey player, although her personal papers betrayed a voracious smoking addiction. An award winning dog breeder and talented photographer, she was welcome at Buckingham Palace.

Against this charmed life were top secret government files, describing her as a harridan law breaker and letters from the King “full of rage and grief “ at her antics. Her disobedience wasn't restricted to Britain. Letters and diaries revealed her friendship with the most feared Indian nationalists of the day including Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sarla Devi and Lala Lajpat Rai.

It made no sense. Who was this woman -frivolous socialite or revolutionary? It has taken me years to answer that question.

By the time Sophia was born in 1876, her father was leading the life of a British celebrity and she seemed blessed with good fortune. However, even as Sophia uttered her first words, Duleep was on a collision course with the British government.As he started running out of cash, the Maharajah came to believe the Raj had cheated him. In 1886, he threatened to reclaim his throne and kick the British out of Punjab.

Much to her mother's horror, Sophia and her siblings were sucked into a doomed intrigue. Their belongings packed, the family planned to travel to India, in defiance of British orders. But the Duleep Singhs never made it beyond Aden. All of them had warrants issued against them. Sophia's first arrest came when she was not yet 10 years of age but it would not be her last. Overnight, the pampered princess's life turned into a living hell. While Duleep remained abroad continuing his quarrel, she was dumped on a boat back to England.Disowned by her father, without money, support or hope, it was only thanks to Queen Victoria that she was given a roof over her head.

Thereafter, the child Sophia suffered unimaginably. Her mother died first, destroyed by drinking and depression. Then her youngest and beloved brother succumbed to illness. Finally her father collapsed alone in a shabby hotel room in Paris, broke and broken. Those close to her worried that the Princess had been forever damaged by grief. She rarely spoke, seemingly crippled by shyness.

Of all of Duleep's children she seemed to be the least likely to cause any trouble to the British.They relaxed their hold on her. It was to be a terrible miscalculation on their part.

After a clandestine trip to India in 1900, where she and her sisters were snubbed during the great Delhi Durbar, something changed in Sophia. The parties and fawning press now seemed hollow. She returned to England looking for a better reason to wake up in the morning. She returned looking for a fight.

Among those she fought for were the Lascars and Indian soldiers who fought during World War 1. However her greatest battles were at the helm of the suffragette movement. From the moment she heard of the feminist struggle for franchise in 1909 she became obsessed with the idea and rose quickly in the movement's ranks. At first she gave money and time, appearing at fundraisers where women flocked to meet the exotic Indian royal. Then she signed up to be a tax resistor.Though courts commanded it, she refused to pay, embarrassing King George V who cried out in frustration, `Have we no hold on her?' Sophia goaded the police to arrest her, longing to join arrested suffragettes holding hunger strikes behind bars. She risked her liberty and her life time and again, never more so than when leading a march on Parliament. Sophia found herself in the midst of a riot, physically wrestling with the police as they beat up and sexually assaulted her friends.

Sophia would go on to throw herself at the Prime Minister's car and publically support bomb makers and arsonists who were causing terror throughout Great Britain. For her pains she won a place at the suffragette high table with Emmeline Pankhurst (who is going to be played by Meryl Streep in a forthcoming movie) and became one of the most hated women in England.

Towards the end of her life, Sophia listed only one interest in her Who's Who entry: `The Advancement of Women.' Because of women like her, I have a say in who governs my future. It became my duty to tell her story and put her back in her rightful place in history .

Anand is the author of `Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary' published by Bloomsbury

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